Amazon has told owners it will soon stop supporting older Kindle models - a move which has left some users outraged.
In emails from the tech giant, affected users were thanked for being a “longtime Kindle customer” but told devices released during or before 2012 would no longer receive updates from 20 May.
The move will mean owners of older Kindles, including its earliest models such as the Kindle Touch and some Kindle Fire tablets, will be unable to download new e-books.
Amazon said it has supported affected models for years and their active users have been offered discounts to help “transition to newer devices”, but some have criticised it for making up to two million devices “obsolete”.
“I have a Kindle Touch that I’ve had since 2013, it works great, I bought a book on it a few months ago, and suddenly it’s obsolete,” one X user wrote in a post tagging Amazon.
It would probably take a lot of work to make like a wizard for low tech people to use for jailbreaking, right? A relative has brain damage and used to be tech savvy but now gets uneasy about things like that. I could jailbreak it for her, specifically, but I keep thinking about people in her situation who were early adopters of ebooks and would love to keep using the same device but can’t do steps like that anymore.
Sorry I asked this on your helpful comment! It just made me think of that kindle using relative. I second using that wiki and removing drm from all your books.
It is possible but way beyond my ability. I suspect it would be a pretty complex task because it requires keys to be obtained from Amazon, and the process is often a little different for each of the many many versions of the Kindle. Most people would need a tech-capable helper to do it for them.
Honestly, there should be a law requiring software unlocking for any manufacturer-abandoned hardware.